If completed, the facility from California-based Natron Energy will sit on Kingsboro Business Park, a 2,187-site east of Rocky Mount. Details on how many jobs Natron pledges to create will be shared when the North Carolina Economic Investment Committee convenes at 3 p.m. today.
Founded in 2012, Natron opened its first commercial battery factory in Holland, Michigan, this spring. Sodium-ion is an emerging battery material, and the company has received nearly $20 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to fund its initial commercial efforts. This money was part of a broader Biden administration initiative to help scale “high-risk and potentially disruptive new technologies” in the energy sector.
Natron has private backers as well; in January, the company has reported raising more than $300 million from investors, and United Airlines has made a “strategic equity investment” as it looks to electrify its airport ground equipment.
Compared to lithium-ion, another alternative battery material, sodium-ion is more abundant and faster charging. Natron has patented a type of blue electrodes that it says produces longer-lasting batteries when combined with sodium ions. The batteries Natron makes in Michigan are used to provide backup power to data centers, though the company says future use cases will expand.
Sodium is heavier than lithium and therefore “is more promising for stationary rather than portable applications,” said Katerina Aifantis, a University of Florida researcher who studies nanomaterials and energy storage. She added that sodium ion is also more environmentally friendly than its lithium counterpart.
With Natron, North Carolina has further pinned its economic future to environmentally sustainable alternative batteries. Since 2021, the state has awarded incentives to several lithium-ion battery projects — including a 5,000-worker Toyota factory in Randolph County as well as smaller plants near Charlotte, Wilmington and Raleigh.
Other southeastern states like Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina have also announced electric vehicle battery plants in recent years, joining traditional Midwestern auto industry hotbeds Michigan, Ohio and Indiana to form a so-called “battery belt.”
Gov. Roy Cooper is scheduled attend the Natron announcement this afternoon at Edgecombe Community Colllege. Before then, the Economic Investment Committee plans to award the company a job development investment grant, or JDIG. As with all JDIGs, this money will be distributed through payroll tax benefits only after the company reaches yearly hiring and investment targets stipulated in the agreement.
Natron declined to share the number of jobs it plans to create until the EIC meeting.
State economic leaders have tried to fill the Kingsboro Business Park megasite for at least a decade. And the land had a previous potential occupant; in the 2010s, a few hundred acres in the center of the site were graded and cleared in preparation for the anticipated arrival of Triangle Tyre, a Chinese tiremaker that announced it would build its first U.S. factory in the county. However, as frequently occurs with state-backed economic projects, the Triangle Tyre deal eventually fell through.
Last year, a state-commissioned report identified Kingsboro as the most “pad-ready” megasite in North Carolina, meaning a company could reasonably begin to build on it right away. To qualify as a megasite, a location must have at least 1,000 contiguous acres.
About 65 miles east of Raleigh, Edgecombe County is one of the poorer counties in the state. Several major employers have exited in recent decades, including Glenoit Fabrics in the county seat of Tarboro, as well as Texfi Industries and QVC in Rocky Mount. These exoduses have left a gap as Edgecombe is tied for the third-highest unemployment rate among North Carolina counties, at 6.1%.
The arrival of Natron would reset Edgecombe’s future — if the company fulfills its commitment.
A major economic project “can be a game-changer that puts a county on a different economic trajectory,” said Jonathan Morgan, a professor at the UNC School of Government who coauthored a 2020 report on workforce entry barriers in Edgecombe County. “There can be considerable ripple effects — additional suppliers and related industries coming to a community.”
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